Agenda and minutes

Venue: Council Chamber - Time Square, Market Street, Bracknell, RG12 1JD. View directions

Contact: Lizzie Rich  01344 352253

Items
No. Item

23.

Declarations of Interest

Members are asked to declare any disclosable pecuniary or affected interests in respect of any matter to be considered at this meeting.

 

Any Member with a Disclosable Pecuniary Interest in a matter should withdraw from the meeting when the matter is under consideration and should notify the Democratic Services Officer in attendance that they are withdrawing as they have such an interest. If the Disclosable Pecuniary Interest is not entered on the register of Members interests the Monitoring Officer must be notified of the interest within 28 days.

 

Any Member with an affected Interest in a matter must disclose the interest to the meeting.  There is no requirement to withdraw from the meeting when the interest is only an affected interest, but the Monitoring Officer should be notified of the interest, if not previously notified of it, within 28 days of the meeting.

Minutes:

There were no Declarations of Interest.

 

 

24.

Minutes pdf icon PDF 159 KB

To approve as a correct record the minutes of the meeting held on 24 October 2019

Minutes:

The minutes of the meeting held on 24 October 2019 were approved as a correct record.

 

Arising from the minutes, the following updates were noted:

·         Officers had made contact with Royal Military Academy Sandhurst to discuss the use of CCTV in private hire and hackney carriage vehicles on base.

·         Bracknell town centre management had been invited to the next trade meeting on 26 February 2020.

·         No further feedback had been received from the trade around fare rises.

·         Officers had offered support to the trade around carrying disabled customers.

·         No further updates had been received from the trade regarding the misuse of the taxi rank at Waitrose in the Lexicon.

·         A list of wheelchair accessible hackney carriage vehicles was already available on the Council website. The numbers of other registered vehicles would be available in future, after a development to the IT system.

·         The Committee discussed measures to be taken in future to encourage the use of electric and hybrid taxis to support the Council’s pledge to be carbon neutral by 2050. It was also noted that the Government had set 2035 as the deadline to buy new petrol and diesel cars.  Officers agreed to bring a report with proposals to the next meeting.

25.

Urgent Items of Business

Any other items which, pursuant to Section 100B(4)(b) of the Local Government Act 1972, the Chairman decides are urgent.

Minutes:

There was no Urgent Items of Business.

26.

Notice of Public Speaking

To note those agenda items which have received an application for public speaking

Minutes:

There were no items of Public Speaking.

27.

Private Hire and Hackney Carriage Fees Consultation Report pdf icon PDF 13 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Suzanne McLaughlin presented the Private Hire and Hackney Carriage Fees Consultation report.

 

The consultation had been carried out on the fees proposed to Committee at their last meeting, in line with statutory requirements. The consultation had been held between December and January 2019/20 and had been advertised both through Bracknell News and by letters to all licensed drivers. One response had been received.

 

In response to questions, the following points were noted:

·         Members expressed regret for the lack of response from the trade, and the Chairman agreed to raise their concern at the next trade meeting.

·         It was noted that there had been similar responses in Wokingham and West Berkshire. In Wokingham, no responses had been received and in West Berkshire, 30 responses had been received from drivers of the same company.

·         Members were reminded that even when a trade association had been in place the past, Bracknell Forest had historically had little consultation response from the trade.

·         Officer were asked to consider using other communication methods such as Survey Monkey, however this would deviate from the Council’s corporate consultation policy.

·         There had been significant take up of the safeguarding training for licensed drivers.

·         It was noted that there would be no further changes to the fees and charges in Annex B as these had been approved by the Committee.  


 

Contact Information

Democratic services

Email: committee@bracknell-forest.gov.uk